Want to help me with a paper?

As part of a writing seminar course, I have to write an “argument” paper. As part of a little bet I had with myself to see if I could work PoDW into my coursework somehow, I’m arguing that PoDW should be revisited and/or released on DVD.

The question is: why?

Beyond just helping me out, this could be a good exercise in general. Why do we want PoDW out on DVD, or why do we want a remake? Is it to have a high-quality version for ourselves and revisit old memories? To introduce new audiences to the show? To hopefully get some insight on how the story would have ended through some kind of “extras” reel? To honor the fact that it was this great (if slightly obscure) jewel of American TV animation? What other reasons come to mind?

Please post away–it would be interesting to see your input and your motivations for wanting this. 🙂 Thanks!

Happy new year!

Hope you’re all doing well! I’ve made it through one semester of graduate school unscathed and am posting this just a couple of days before beginning my second term (which will be a lot crazier).

Just a few random notes, to reassure the small but steadfast group of you who do check in that I’m still around. 🙂

False DVD information: Recently I’ve seen more people posting comments about false DVD releases about the show. Like always, there are NO official releases of the show on DVD. I’m keeping an eye out, and a lot of my friends and acquaintances (some of whom are very vigilant in terms of keeping up with DVD/entertainment information ) know to let me know if they come across any information about the show, so there’s a network of us keeping an eye out for any news.

David Kirschner: Some people are either claiming or have come to assume that David Kirschner’s been blind to the demand for the show to be revisited: this is not true. Those of you who’ve been keeping up with the site for years should hopefully remember that Mr. Kirschner e-mailed me directly a few years ago. (Though I’m trying to find the blog post and am coming up blank…I did post about that here, right?) He’s been aware of this site and of the fan base for quite a while, and he’s grateful for both, and has not forgotten about the show. However, we have yet to see if this will actually lead to him revisiting the show. There are rumors, but nothing substantial.

Seriously, I have no idea where people are getting this false information from. I don’t expect that all people interested in learning about the show would visit my site–I suspect that the Wikipedia entry gets more hits than this site does–but there’s nothing there that would lead them astray, either.

Anyway, on to lighter things…

Dark Water: I found my VHS copy of Dark Water episodes 1-4 (with Roddy McDowall voicing Niddler–unfortunately I can’t find the VHS with episode 5 on it) and will be making a DVD copy and hopefully ripping video clips soon. For some reason, there are some people who are adamant that McDowall never voiced Niddler, and that it was Frank Welker all along: hopefully this will put those rumors to rest.

Storyboard photos: Also, while I was back at my parents’ house for the winter holidays, I finally went through the copies of the storyboards for episode 1 that I obtained this summer, and snapped photos of the scenes that are cut or altered. Interestingly, some of these extra/edited scenes were in the comics! Hopefully those will be up soon (possibly on my Flickr account, just to get them up somewhere, as there are over 100 photos).

That’s about it for now. Happy 2010! Hopefully this year brings good things for you.

The quarterly (not-an-)update

Hey, everyone–how are you doing?

So as I mentioned in the last post, I will be starting grad school this fall. I’m attempting to set a goal for myself, which is to make a substantial update to the site (and not just the blog) before school starts at the end of August. We’ll see if I can do it–I really hope I can because there’s a lot I would like to clean up and consolidate. Not to mention, I really don’t know if I will have time to make any big updates to this site during my two years in school (something tells me Carnegie Mellon isn’t the easiest of schools…), and I don’t want to let this site become more stagnant than it already has (the date in the header and footer still says 2007!). The biggest constraints that come to mind are time and my aching right wrist…we’ll see how it goes, though.

To those of you who have continued to stop by and who’ve taken a moment to send me a note recently–thank you so much. Life has been really busy (between preparing to start school, move, and leave my current job and my life here in Atlanta) and your kind words have really lifted my spirits. 🙂

Some PoDW-related stuff
– There are several very cool items on eBay right now: several gorgeous cels from The Quest (ep. 1) and a storyboard sketch sheet (!!!) from Dishonor. (ep. 2) The cels are $70 each and the storyboard sketch sheet is $80. These are the best cels I’ve seen available for purchase in years, so if you can afford them, go for it.
– It’s been pointed out to me (hi, Mugetsu!) that the five seals you see tiling down the page, the ones from the end credits of episodes 1-13, are not available for download anywhere on the site. CRAP. Sorry about that! Here they are: the seals from The Quest, Dishonor, Break-Up, Betrayal, and Victory.

Some animation-related news…80s Fever is in the air again. I heard a rumor (hi, Ryan!) that the same people who released Mysterious Cities of Gold on DVD are thinking about releasing Spartacus and the Sun Beneath the Sea. (I have not seen either of these, but from all the e-mails that have come in, a bunch of you have and were very fond of both these shows, so…heads-up!)

On top of that, according to Johane Matte (a.k.a. Rufftoon), an animation artist who did storyboard work on Avatar, there are plans for a sequel to Mysterious Cities of Gold–apparently there have been rumors about this for a while now, and other failed attempts, but she seems to believe this stands a chance of happening.

I couldn’t help but read that and feel a little discouraged. It’s great that so many other beloved shows are being rediscovered, but why not this one? There are so many thousands of fans out there who have such fond and strong memories of this show. I know I haven’t really done anything to organize or mobilize the fans, besides attempts at messageboards and the like (though I’ve thought about it more recently)–my emphasis has been more on digging up information about the show around the time of its production and posting as much as I can find. There’s a petition on petitiononline.com with thousands of signatures, but who’s doing anything with it?

When looking through old e-mails, I came across a mention of a posting on a messageboard a couple of years back where somebody claimed that the PoDW master reels in the Warner Bros. vault had been badly damaged, and that’s why they haven’t been released on DVD or otherwise revisited yet. As far as I know, that’s only a rumor…but it’s kind of sad that wholly unsubstantiated rumors are all we have to depend on. If that news were true, that would be terrible, but at least it would be a concrete reason. It’s hard for me to fathom that people could just blithely overlook this show, considering the loyal fan base and how many people do remember it.

On race and animation

Happy New Year!

I’m taking a break from working on grad school applications (the first two are due Monday, the rest in February) to post; with any luck I can manage a website update sometime in late February or early in the spring (yikes…). I guess I didn’t have a chance to post again before 2008 ended, but that’s all right. I hope this year brings good things for all of you, and I just want to state again how grateful I am for your continued support and encouragement of this site and of me.

Anyway, moving on–there was some news (not PoDW-related, but animation-related) within the last couple of months that I wanted to bring up here. It’s a bit old now, and I didn’t really think a whole lot about it at the time, but I’ve been reading a bit about it today, and the more I think about it, the more upset it makes me.

M. Night Shyamalan is creating a trilogy of films based on Avatar: The Last Airbender. (This isn’t the problem, FYI.) I don’t know about you all, but I think this is one of the most finely crafted animated series to make it big in many years. A big part of its appeal to me was the attention to detail the creators have paid to ensuring that the Avatar universe is heavily Asian-inspired and completely faithful to the cultures it draws from. The characters’ ethnicities and clothing, the architecture, the food and drink, and the overall philosophy is rooted very heavily in Asian, Inuit, and South American traditions and styles with a twist of steampunk thrown in (the Fire Nation’s naval technology). Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino were very heavily inspired by Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, and they spent years on world-building, working with people from the cultures they were trying to convey to ensure authenticity, and employed a multi-ethnic cast and crew to make this refreshingly diverse universe as solid and true as possible.

And it was fantastic: the characters are obviously internationally inspired, and they don’t play into stereotypes, the way Asian or minority characters tend to in so many TV shows and films. The characters in Avatar are normal human beings, and have attracted the attention of fans all over the world because of what a breath of fresh air it is to see the diversity that exists in our world portrayed so warmly and respectfully. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the show and trying to identify all the different world cultures they incorporated into each new episode, and they treated every single one with the utmost respect. As a 1.5-generation Indian myself (I was born in India and grew up in the US), I became really nervous when they introduced Guru Pathik, but I really had nothing to worry about–his character was solid and wonderful, and not at all an Apu-like caricature, which is how Indians have almost always been portrayed for many years in the media.

This does have a PoDW tie, actually, because the cast of PoDW is completely multi-ethnic, not just in skin color but in facial structure, accents, clothing, and more. And while the world is quite fantasy-heavy and plays with pirate legends and references, there are some undeniable ties to various countries and cultures in the designs of the characters and locales. Many of the people I’ve talked to through this site, and many of the comments I’ve seen on other sites, have pointed this out as something very positive and refreshing.

Anyway, about a month ago, the casting for Shyamalan’s Avatar films was announced–and the main characters are all white.

Read more

Wikipedia entry

Thanks to Nathan for alerting me to this, and sorry I didn’t post it earlier (I was out of town and fell pretty sick while I was traveling, so I’ve been out of commission for over a week).

A guy by the name of Soetermans took it upon himself to make some major edits to PoDW Wikipedia site, deleting a lot of stuff he (and he alone) claimed doesn’t belong on Wikipedia. I think the admins intervened in the favor of the regular maintainers, but a lot of content that was once there is gone. If you have the inclination and time and aren’t averse to editing Wikipedia (some people think that’s the height of geekiness, but I think it embodies the original intent and ideals of the World Wide Web in many ways), please take a few moments to head over and add in whatever info you’re willing.

Oh, and a note to the guy who insisted in the Discussion tab (sorry, I’m not a frequent contributer and am not up on my Wiki-jargon) that Frank Welker is the only voice actor for Niddler: actually, he isn’t. I have VHS copies to prove that Roddy McDowall did do the original voice, and I swear I’ll digitize them soon so everyone can see! (Not that I’m complaining about having a social life…it just makes my online presence more incidental and less regular.)

Maybe I’ll ride this wave of guilt over letting this website just sit here and rot, and go back to my parents’ place, pick up my copies of the VHS tapes, and go to our local Indian grocery and see about having them converted. I’ve been eyeing DVD-burner/VHS decks, too, so I can just do it myself. And TVs, because those are also kind of important. ;P It’s been really nice living a TV-free existence, though I’d only be using it for movies and basic channels (reloading weather.com and searching for streaming webcasts of local weather when under a tornado warning is not ideal! But for Atlantans, 11alive.com does have one). I’ll figure something out soon. And maybe I’ll spend a weekend just catching up on website updates…it’s so hard when the weather’s so beautiful, though.

Some more Japanese info

(Thank goodness WordPress saves drafts–my browser crashed when I was writing this this weekend.)

Here’s something else: the actual Japanese title isn’t merely Dark Water, but “Michi no Umi he Dark Water,” or “To the undiscovered/mysterious sea: Dark Water”. Neat, eh? It had a limited airing, on NHK-BS2 on satellite TV. I don’t think they aired all 21 episodes, based on the air dates I found, but I don’t know that for sure.

And it had unique opening and closing theme music, sung by Hironobu Kageyama, who might or might not have been Ren’s voice actor (there’s also a guy named Takeshi Kusao cited as voicing Ren).
– The opening theme is “Aisubeki no Senshitachi”, or Beloved Soldiers.
– The closing theme is “Senshitachi no Kyuusoku”, or Soldiers’ Rest.
They’re just as cheesy and generic as they seem from the titles–I found clips of both songs (scroll down to the beige box with two sets of links; in the second list, 5 is the opening theme and 6 is the closing–each will spawn a pop-up window). For those who can read Japanese, here are the lyrics for the opening and closing. Set your browser’s character encoding to Shift-JIS for these.) Look for them if you ever go to a karaoke parlor in Japan–you just might find them!

That’s all for now, but that’s plenty!

On this site and the show

I’ve found several posts and comments lately about this site, from people who think it’s a little creepy, or who think it’s strange that I’d keep this site so regularly updated even though it’s about a show that stopped production over a decade ago.

To be honest, sometimes I wonder if it’s a bit strange as well. But I’ve just had this site for so long that I couldn’t imagine retiring it. I’m not obsessed with this show. It doesn’t rule my life. I don’t think about it that often. I haven’t even watched an episode in quite a while–the last time I did, I was hanging out with some friends a few months ago, and they started talking about it, and they pulled up a couple of episodes on YouTube to watch. (Hi, Genna and Victor!)

It makes me really sad to visit “website archives”–big sites that are no longer updated in any way just because there’s no new active content to put up. At the very least, I feel like if those webmasters have the time and still enjoy the subjects of their sites, they should keep the design and the backbone of the site updated to be in line with modern web standards. It doesn’t hurt to dust the site off every now and then, especially since people are most likely still visiting.

If nobody visited, I think that might make a difference in whether or not I stick with this. But for every weirded-out comment I’ve seen/gotten, I have dozens thanking me for keeping the site updated and reminiscing fondly about what a great show this was and still is. I’ve gotten so many messages from people who love the show. I’ve come across many hundreds of posts on messageboards of people who still love the show. There are countless thousands of people who’d love an official DVD release. The show may be “dead,” in terms of no new content, but it’s very much alive and well among the people who love it.

There’s also still the very real possibility of a comeback. Lately I’ve had quite a few people contact me about possibly going in on co-writing a movie script to end the series. There are a lot of groups out there who are very interested in seeing or creating the ending of the show. There are plenty of rumors flying around, too. All these pieces are just sort of hanging in the air, waiting to fall into place. It’s totally possible!

People have asked me if this site is an archive, and it definitely is not. However, from here on out, I don’t know if I really will do regular updates in the same way that I used to back in its heyday during my college years. I’m getting older (I started this site when I was 15, and I’ll be 26 next month!) and work and (eventually) grad school will definitely keep me from doing much. The lack of time, a real desk/chair setup, and inclination to spend all my free time on my computer in Japan have kept me from making weekly/monthly updates the way I used to. There are a few things I still would like to do, a few sections I’d like to complete (the episode screenshot slideshows that Kooshmeister and I were doing, and consistent episode summaries for all 21 episodes, instead of those novel-length ones for ~5-6 episodes, which aren’t even necessary anymore since the show’s available online), and I know that there are fans working on fanfics and scripts and posters and artwork that they’ll be sending me, and I may luck out and stumble onto more behind-the-scenes content. Beyond that, there isn’t really much left, unless the show makes a comeback. That’s what I’m holding out for at this point.

But as the years have gone on, I really have realized that this is one of the best modern American animated series to come out in recent history. There’s been very little to match or surpass it. In the 90s, there were Gargoyles, Batman: The Animated Series, SwatKATs: The Radical Squadron (not a masterpiece, but still original and a lot of fun, with great characters and villains and a fun animation style), and other great shows. After that…what has there been? Recently there was the He-Man remake, Avatar: The Last Airbender, X-Men: Evolution, Samurai Jack, the Clone Wars shorts…and okay, yeah, this is a subjective list, and I’m really out of touch with anything else that may have come out while I’ve been living abroad. I enjoy Kim Possible and Danny Phantom and Dexter’s Laboratory and others, and from the 90s I loved (the original Nickelodeon) Rugrats and Doug and Hey Arnold! and Courage The Cowardly Dog, but I’m not including them on this list, because they’re fun but they aren’t really pushing the envelope. People will argue that The Simpsons and Family Guy should be on there–and they’re cool for satire and social commentary, but in those cases, animation is just a medium to bring those ideas across. The art isn’t really anything special.

Anyway, the point is that before PoDW, I really can’t think of any shows that succeeded in introducing this kind of gorgeous animation, strong characterizations, noticeable character and plot development (people really hate when Ren doesn’t leave Bloth for dead in the quicksand in “The Game Players of Undaar”, but I have to admit that I really love that moment), and a continuing story, “all in one neat little package” (to quote the show, heh). It was revolutionary–especially coming from Hanna-Barbera, which is credited widely as having killed creativity in American animation with the cheap visual quality of The Flintstones and The Jetsons–and it’s still one of my favorite shows. It’s totally a 90s production, and the dialogue and some of the animation reflects it, but on the whole, I think it’s aged pretty well and still tops out so many current shows, especially since people seem to favor cheap animation and art styles more and more. It’s a real shame that PoDW failed to catch on, but people do remember it very fondly. And as long as people are out there wanting to find others who love the show, I’ll be here, doing my thing with this site.

That is all. ;o)

Out of curiosity

If Pirates of Dark Water were to make a comeback, what format would you like to see it in? Animated? Live action? Movie? TV series? Miniseries? And no, this wasn’t inspired by any news or anything–just my curiosity.

Comment here, or drop me a line. I’m interested to see what the fan base as a whole thinks. (My thoughts are behind the cut…)

Read more

Courtesy of several messageboard threads

I love my referral logs. SiteMeter has never let me down!

Found on the TelevisionWithoutPity forums (where there’s a lot of love for this show–gratifying, considering the title of the site):

“One of the big things I remember about the show was that the five-episode pilot drew a larger female audience than the producers had expected; The strong female lead probably helped there. When the producers found that out, they re-tooled the show to make Tula a “better role model for girls”, i.e. less physical, less agrressive, and given relative passive nature magic powers rather than fighting prowess. Cause we can’t have girls being too tough or anything….It was a published interview with the TV execs in question, when the show first aired.”

I would love to get my hands on a copy of this interview. Wow. I’d say more but I have a headache and am not up to thinking too much right now, but I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, either here or via e-mail.

Also found on the JournalFen.com Fandom Lounge community (I had a brief “holy crap” moment when I saw the domain and immediately thought of Fandom Wank, haha):

“I honestly forget where I got mine, but they appear to be here at myspleen.net. I used to go the Andorus’s Pirates of Dark Water site for the links (which is http://www.piratesofdarkwater.net) but the site was down the last few times I tried to get on it.”

Eep. I had no idea the site’s experienced any downtime. Then again, considering that my hours are almost the opposite of everyone in the western world, where the vast majority of my hits come from, I really have no idea how well the site’s performing during the day for you (which is the middle of the night for me). Have any of you experienced prolonged or repeated periods of downtime? Please let me know–if it’s a real issue, I’ll definitely bring it up with my host.